Racing Engineering is the GP2 Series vice-Champion team 2015 29.11.2015: The last race of the 2015 GP2 Series has been run at the Yas Marina Circuit

The last race of the 2015 GP2 Series has been run at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi. The day start for this race meant that the track conditions, with an ambient temperature of 28º and 33º on the asphalt, were quite different from the night race of the day before and more similar to Friday’s free practice.

After their good Saturday race, the two Racing Engineering drivers were well placed on the reversed grid, with Jordan King in third position and Alexander Rossi in fifth. Both of the Spanish team cars were on the Pirelli ‘white’ mediums.

The start was good for both, Jordan keeping his third position and Alex gaining one to put himself right behind his team mate, in fourth position, but a big accident at the back of the field involving several cars forced the race to be red flagged to recover the stricken cars and repair the track barriers.

Sadly, the damage to the barriers was too bad to allow for repairs in time to complete the remaining 20 laps before the beginning of the programme scheduled for the F1 Grand Prix, so the GP2 Sprint Race was cancelled putting an unexpected end to the championship.

The final round at Abu Dhabi has completed yet another very positive season for Racing Engineering in the GP2 Series, the Spanish team has been vice-Champion both in the Drivers’ standings, with Rossi, and in Team Championships after a year when the team’s two drivers have been competitive throughout the whole campaign.

 Now is time to look forward to next season, and the first step for that will be the three days of testing due next week at Yas Marina circuit, where Racing Engineering will be present with its two cars and four drivers.

    
Sebastien Viger, Team Engineer:

“It was a short race! We had a good start, the strategy was to start well and get bothers drivers on the podium and secure second place in the Team Championship.

Gasly made it a bit easier for us going out at Turn 3 but then there was massive accident and the start was not resumed.

 It was disappointing for Jordan as he could have scored a lot of points and moved into the top ten in the Drivers’ Championship but no points today but we are happy to secure second in the Team Championship.”

 
Jordan King:

“It’s been a massive anti-climax, you build yourself up, put in a lot of energy and especially for the last race of the year you want to go out with a good result and so it was quite surreal to just get out of the car and that’s it.

 There have been some good positives to take from the year, I had a good strata gin so that’s four or five good starts in a row so that’s positive and we were running third and a podium was on the cards if not the win which would have been good and gain some more points.

It’s annoying as I would have liked a trophy to finish the season and some more points would have jumped me up a few places but from a team point of view we were second in the championship so all in all it’s not so bad. But I’m ready now for the week’s testing.”
 


Alexander Rossi:

“It was a little bit disappointing to end the season this way, I think we had a good chance to get on the podium and maybe take the win. The start was good and I was immediately up to fourth behind Jordan, but then the red flag came out and we couldn’t do anything about it.

But looking back it has been a fantastic season and we should be very proud of what we’ve accomplished and being second on the drivers and team championships I think is an amazing result. We’ve had some disappointments but we’ve always come back from them and we took three race wins which is a great thing.”

– Ines Koschutnig – photos GP2